A Reader Writes... (Yes, I Know the Hours are Long - Part 5)

In response to the post, “Yes, I Know the Hours are Long,” a teacher writes:

I could not disagree with your philosophy more. Try adding about 20 hours to the amounts you have stated above and you might reach the number of hours a teacher puts in of his or her own time. I love my job, my avocation, but the truth is this: I am contracted by my district to work a certain number of hours and I go way over that amount already at no additional pay.

My family does come first, and we are being "prepped and paper-worked" to death this year by new arbitrary concepts, philosophies, etc. that take away from our planning hours and time we need to prepare lessons and be effective teachers. We are being pulled out of class for meetings during the day (sub days), which are detrimental to our students. All in the name of what?

Please do not insult us and tell us how many hours we work and what should come first in our lives. We are actually in the classroom right now, and we are better judges of that than you are.

SC Response

Again, I in no way was attempting to make the claim that teachers only work 60 hours a week. I was pointing out that as a rule, effective teachers work at least 60 hours a week, and attempted to show how those hours are allocated. But let’s be reasonable, 80 hours a week would require over 11 hours of work a day, 7 days a week. This does not happen on a continuous basis. But I think we both agree that there are a lot of hours involved.

I will argue that if you are a professional, on salary, that you are not contracted for a specific number of hours a day. You are contracted to do the work as assigned. I know that is not warm and fuzzy, but it is the truth.

I cannot address the specifics of what is occurring on your campus. I would just hope that the concepts and philosophies that are being introduced on your campus are directly related to improving student performance.

I apologize for insulting you, for that was not my intent. My intent was to validate that teaching is a time intensive endeavor. My intent was to point out that there are ways we can work more efficiently, which at the very least reduces stress. And my intent was to point out that if you don’t love this job, I don’t know if the renumeration justifies the time that you will spend on it.

Think. Work. Achieve.

Your turn...